Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is the Full Funnel B t B Marketing podcast,
brought to you by full Funnel dot io.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let's die. Welcome to the episode of Full Final Life.
As promised, today, we're going to talk about ABM expansion
and retention. And there's a specific reason for this. During
the past episodes were always on Each of the episodes
were so repetitive patterns. So then this we're asking us
(00:35):
about the expansion playbooks. Then we did a service always
and UH define that it could be a good topic
to talk about.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
The issue as well that we see was expansion that
when it comes to com based market and most teams
are thinking about new pipeline generation right rare the teams
pick up. You know, expansion as a main goal is
main collateral. Well, in reality, for the majority of companies,
(01:06):
especially those that are selling to enterprise, this could be
one of the most important playbooks. Most of all, there
is a huge opportunity right to do the cross sell
or to expand to new business units or two different
bank community groups. And the second specific reason why we
put that expansion and retention because if you are not
(01:27):
actively work on it, then you might lose that customer.
And if you lose this customer, you can lose a
significant chunk of your revenue. Right, that's why both motions.
Let's say both programs are coming in parallel, so today
was flat. We want to introduce the framework. We want
to introduce the framework in a natural order, so that
(01:48):
could be multiple variations, right, how you can do expansion program.
But we want to show you the central framework and
the core steps of the expansion playbook and explained the
importance of each of the steps. As always, you guys
are better welcome to jump in, ask any questions and
(02:09):
we'll cover them live and let us know in the
chat where you're all joining us from again broadcasting from
Villa Rao, Spain.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Valencia, Spain. I wanted to drop other two cents in
terms of the importance of expansion intention these days, especially
where we have seen a big shift from kind of
growth at all costs, where a lot of companies back
in twenty twenty two, you know, going even a little
bit in twenty twenty three, but definitely the big shift
(02:41):
started to happen back in twenty twenty three where the
abundance of BC capital as it used to be before,
you know, became more expensive getting the investments and we
have started seeing a big shift where the companies are
now looking at more sustainable, cost effective growth and the
(03:03):
core of many B to B companies, especially SaaS companies,
the core growth engine is not acquisition. Actually, when you
look at the percent of revenue that is generated, the
most important part is through existing customers through retention number one,
(03:24):
and then of course expansion, and when you're selling into
enterprise accounts, it is really the biggest opportunity is to
really grow that deal within that enterprise account. I think
like this is very relevant from the perspective of the
change in the market a lot of companies are facing that.
(03:46):
Not all companies are necessarily aware of the importance of this,
but let's hope will now share some light on that
and give some insights in to why you should be
thinking about it and how to think about it as well.
Hello everybody, I see also somebody from Spain join Germany
(04:10):
the day we are more on the European side of
the Atlantic, but as always looking forward to jump in.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
So I also think it's because there are several holidays
in the yes, so then Friday off and probably somebody
decided as well to extend the long weekend from today.
So Jack aside, we're going to explain this framework step
by step and share the critical steps. But in a nutshell,
(04:42):
the key let's say, the key pillars of expansion are
number one, understand the needs of all there is and
the buying triggers off your champion of person who initially
purchased your product and how your product impacts the jobs
to be done and also holds aligned with the strategic
(05:04):
initiatives of that company, of that specific business unit. Step
number two, or let's say the second core pillar accelerating
time to value. You're not going to successfully like run
successful expansion program if you don't have a satisfied champion,
(05:24):
if you don't have a customer that actually gained value
from your product. Right, So this is one of the
most important sayings. You need to accelerate time to value
that they get. And the third critical pillar is making
sure that your champion becomes a hero of the organization.
So you need to create internal case study and then
(05:46):
help or let's say, leverage this person to be able
to influence other business units or the regional teams. And lastly,
in terms of selection, where you're going to head to
what units you're going to sell or to what teams? Right,
how you're going how you go into structure expansion program.
It would be very similar to the process of new
(06:08):
pipeline generation. You need to you need to let's say
make these bets as well, always say define the units
with the highest likelihood to become a sales opportunity. Define
the units or the teams right that are likely to
buy your product. This is the key because I know
that whenever teams mentioned to us that they do expansion,
(06:30):
in most cases there's just an opportunistic thinking. So let's
say we are here in Spain, we have the customer.
Let's say we're selling to the regional team here in Spain,
but we want to get in the US, and we
have no like there is no evidence and there are
no signals, and there is no data that proves our decision.
(06:51):
But just we know that it would be cool to
sell to the office and put it on our website
as the logo.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So this opportunistic scent, and it is very similar to
new pipeline generation. That's that's that's the first thing. The
second one, that's the way how teams are doing this expansion.
It just you know, sending e mail saying hey, I
mean I would be generalizer obviously here, but the more
or less looks like, okay, we already vendor, we help
(07:19):
your unit and Spain with this and that let's have
a demo, right, and then just rinks and repeats from
multiple touch points called the male cold message and cold
call and etc. But in reality to these programs at least,
we have never seen that they work successfully. So with
that being said, let's go into like, we have seven
(07:40):
critical steps when you that you need to apply when
develop your ABM expansion playbook. The first step always say
is that you need to embed customer research into your
client success and you either involve your client success team
into it, or account owner or the market and person.
(08:01):
So would you like to jump up?
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Absolutely? So I'd like to address this from two perspectives,
I think like the first perspective is what are the
insights that we're trying to get here? And the second
perspective is, Okay, how can we actually embed this in
our ongoing operations in a way that it's not an
(08:25):
extra step for the customers that we are not asking
to do as a favor by joining an interview or
during a call, but it feels an actual part of
the customer relationship, so that you actually be using that
to develop a deeper customer relationship instead of asking them
for an extra favor six months after you haven't spoke
(08:46):
to them, or two years after you haven't spoke to them,
which is actually often the case. What we see with
our clients when we talk to them, okay, as one
of the steps to start speaking to their customers, we
hear often a lot of hesitation. The reason is that
they actually haven't spoken to them in a very long time,
and that is actually a bad sign because, as we know,
(09:11):
the majority of customers churn silently. So if you're not
having any conversation, if you don't know what's going on,
it doesn't mean that no news is good news. It
means that potentially you could be having a churn that
is being developed there. Anyhow, go back to the customer insights. Now,
(09:35):
you want to collect different kinds of insights, and the
way that I would like to group group them is
you would like I want you to think about it, okay.
We want to collect the set of insights that will
help us, like Andre said, promote the champion as the
hero within the organization, So the success of the initial
(10:00):
implementation or a project, right, so anything that has to
do with that in a similar way that you would
collect input about the case study. But I think what's
also very important is to also capture the ongoing changes
in the strategic priorities of your target accounts, because if
(10:21):
you're thinking about CHURM prevention, and also if you're thinking
about expansion as in not going to other business units,
but as in up selling, you need to understand the
internal evolution. Need to understand obviously if the account is
using your product to its fullest potential for you know,
(10:44):
the needs that they have, but also how these needs
are evolving, because if the needs evolve beyond the initial
use case, you are not aware of it, and the
account just the people, the users, they just assume that
your product might not be able to support it. They
might actually already start looking for alternatives without even maybe
(11:05):
realizing that you might be able to fulfill their needs.
So this is to prevent scharn or of course to
maybe upsell additional products and services features, et cetera, et cetera.
So just to summarize number one, you want to collect
all the relevant information about the that you're able to
(11:30):
create a kind of a case study internal case study
from that target account the first implementation, the first project.
You also want to understand the buying journey and understand
the reasons that they both et cetera. And then you
also want to capture these evolving needs. But how do
you do that and how do you imbed that within
(11:52):
the ongoing operations. Well, you will have kind of natural
highlights or natural like important mindlestones and touch points with
that account. For example, you know after the successful sale,
when you have won the deal, this is the moment
where you can ask them about their buyer journey, like
(12:14):
what was happening in the business before decided to buy
a product like yours, who else was involved, what were
the main purchase criteria that you might not be aware of,
who else was involved in buying process, What were the
main reasons that the selected you, who did they compare
it to, who did they compare you to? And what
was the main reason they decided to choose your product? Right,
(12:37):
these are all the things that are going to be
very fresh in their mind the moment that you win
the sale. That's also, by the way, another moment there
is immediately after winning the sale is to obviously start
working on let's say criteria successful implementation, and hopefully that's
(13:02):
already built in a sale and you know what it
means to be successful, like you already have the KPIs
agreed upfront. Okay, how are we going to evaluate the
success of this implementation? Which will be the next part.
And Andrey mentioned, let's help them accelerate time to value.
In other words, let's help them achieve those implementation KPIs
(13:24):
as soon as possible. Let's make sure that they're actually
achieving them to avoid charn and to create value and
create a happy customer, right that might become an advocate.
Now after successful implementation, this is a moment to do
two things. First of all, this is the moment to
(13:44):
start talking about the value that your product is creating
for them. This is the moment where you can start
actually getting the insiens into the case study or if
there are still some missing parts, to understand maybe what's
being missed and to make sure that you're fixing that.
But actually there is another point here, which is this
(14:05):
is also a moment if you see that you have
a happy customer, it is a moment to think about referrals.
I think this is something that a lot of people
miss and referrals can be made in a very low
threshold small esque. And what I mean by that is,
(14:26):
let's say you have a happy customer, they have just
one through successful implementation. You know, you will have a
call with them, and then you could do a bit
of research and see who this customer is connected to.
This person is connected from the industry, from other accounts
that could be your potential customers in the industry, right, so,
(14:49):
and then you know, you could have that conversation. You
can ask them about their experience, you know, and they
may share, you know, how happy they were with this,
et cetera, et cetera. You may ask the like, okay,
I know that we have Maybe you can say, like, okay,
I know that we have an internal NDA, and we
might not be able to create a public case study,
(15:09):
right if you don't have the NDA, obviously this would
be the moment to ask them to create a case
that which is really important. But even if you have
an NDA, you could ask them basically, you know what,
I know we have the NDA, we can create a
public case study, but would you mind if I just
like produced an internal case study. We could only share
with you to promote the good work that you and
(15:31):
your team have been doing within your organization. Right. In
a lot of cases, ambitious, ambitious managers and team contributors
will appreciate actually, you know, promoting them as like and
they said the heroes within their organization. And then as
(15:53):
a next ask, you could be hey, by the way,
I saw that you're connected with such an such and
I was wondering, do you think they would also be
a good like company? They're working, they seem like they
have a similar organization, they could also benefit from from
a from a product like this. And then if they
(16:14):
say yes indeed, or I don't know this person, they
say yeah, yeah, indeed, like yeah, yeah, we work in
the past and that and that. This would be a
moment to ask for referral. And you could just say, hey,
would you mind if I just email them with you
in CC and start a conversation, start a conversation about
okay next. There are other points where you can naturally
(16:36):
imbed customer insights. Maybe you don't have currently, you don't
have these kind of key moments, right, but what you
can do is a lot of companies organized customer events.
These are you know, big events that are organized maybe
once a year. This is a great moment to send
a couple of your people, a few of your people,
(16:57):
and you know it, task them to do some you
can interviews with the customers that are going to attend
those events. Maybe there's some other industry events where you
have the opportunity to meet your customers where you can
again interview them and obviously in any other touch points
between the customer and the customer success team or the
(17:20):
account management team, this is another moment where you can
embed some of these key questions to collect, these insights
to collect, and like I said, you want to understand
the success of the implementation, the value that you're creating
for them, but also you want to understand their evolving
needs so that you can proactively help them fulfill those
(17:44):
needs either your product to prevent their churn, to potentially
enable an up sell within that team. And this would
be the main things to understand and one last thing
to wrap it all up. I think you also I
spoke about it referral excuse me, referrals as they relate
(18:08):
to other companies that your champion may be connected to,
maybe his former employer, et cetera. But you can also
be thinking about and I think here we can start
talking about internal expansion. Is also to start getting the
insights into other business units within the organization. And when
(18:32):
we say business units, depending on a product, this could
mean different departments, This could mean different regions and regional teams.
This could mean literally different business units or different brands
if you're selling into like, for example, customer, good company,
so companies. So it really depends what this means. But
(18:56):
you can basically boil it down to a different buying group. Right,
So this is not the buying group that you have
initially sold to, a potential other buying groups, and your
goal is to start with your champion getting the insights
into the needs and the priorities of other buying groups,
but also, whenever possible, of course, starting to get necessarily
(19:19):
direct referrals, but maybe introductions or you know, helping being
connected to these new buying groups. So this is how
you should think about embedding the research within your ongoing operations.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
I would put now it into practical context. How you're
going to get started? Was it right? That might be
the most important question. So the first step here is
sitting down when we always it's not enough to emphasize,
and it's one of the most critical steps. You must
have been involved as if you're in market and you
(19:57):
must have been involved into account planning. Quite often what
happens is that marketers or ABM marketers, ABM leads, they
just receive account plans from sales without having no context
and no understanding how these plans were created. Right, So
you must have be involved into these account planning. Next step,
(20:20):
you look at all of these accounts and you define
what are the accounts that have expansion potential, right, either
in terms of up sells or cross seals, widening basically
widening your solution inside this organization, get a no valid share.
The next step, when you define these accounts, you need
(20:41):
to segment these accounts into two buckets. Do we have
do we know that these accounts already got value from
our product or we don't know? Right, Because then you
create two different playbooks for those that already got value
from your product. You start with what flood shared. You
invite your champion for the interview. You need to get
(21:04):
a few things from the champions. So first of all,
you need to understand the business triggers, right, what led
In ideal world, you need to gain these insights way
before yourself. Right, that should be part of your sales process.
What led them to buy product like yours?
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Right?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
What were the strategic initiatives, etc. But it will also
help you to understand if that wire belongs to a
specific buying unit. That will understand what are typical challenges
of these champions that they might have. You can talk
about the global initiatives and also ask if the champion
knows about the internal right internal initiatives of different regions units.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Now, when you.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Collect these insights, you try to gain a few things
in ideal world. If you can get case study, that
would be fantastic, like what's said. If not, then you
can just agree on the internal key study and ask
one of the best things ask about would you be
up if just two of us, let's say, oh, our
(22:06):
sme subject matter expert and you will co host an
internal webinar for different for specific business units, for the
regional teams whatever you do like depending on your expansion
priorities right to explain how to improve their specific jobs
to be done. And this is the workshop where basically
(22:29):
you present the best practices. You talk about the common challenges,
the inefficiencies and the jobs to be done in the
processes et cetera. And then you're basically your champion presents
how they are solving it and the results they are getting.
After this, you suggest the debrief and basically creating these
(22:50):
personalized solutions right in an actual This is how the
process looks like for the company. For let's say for
these accounts that you know they are getting value from
your product and there is a tangible value. Now, that
would be the second segment. As we mentioned the companies
that you want to sell to, you know there is
expansion potential, but you have no idea if they are
(23:13):
getting value from it. And maybe this is exactly the
step that plot already mentioned that they they might not
be using your product fully and this is the red
flag that you don't have a good relationship and they
might churn whenever your contract ends. Right, So this is critical.
(23:35):
You need to ensure that you have a playbook to
basically accelerate time to value and to prevent the churn.
In this case, you need to define those account owners
and maybe depending on your team setup with the client
success team, how can you accelerate this time to value, right,
How can you involve your champions because they when they
(23:57):
were buying your product, they were basically put on their neck, right,
depend on obviously on the cost of your product. That
was their responsibility and you need to help them. If
you ignore this, then you are likely to deal with churms.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Well.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Now, especially in the ABM space, we hear this a lot.
A lot of companies purchase ABM software but in reality
just only a few people are using it and they
don't understand how to use the entire product and they
just use the bare minimum let's say, the intent data.
(24:35):
But then you can get any you know, any cheaper solution.
Let's if you will rate and not pay you know,
premium price for the solution like this. So this is
the problem. But when like these, few people just use
a tiny part of your product and the rest of
the team is not using it, then there would be
(24:58):
always questioned from c right from key stakeholders. So why
we're paying the premium price? So you won't be able
to justify it, right, and it always leads to the charge.
So a Natchell, this is how you separate these two
playbooks and put them in action. And obviously, lastly that
would be one of the most important parts. How do
(25:19):
you select the buying units and buying all let's say
the regional teams. We said this in the beginning. It's
in some sense it's similar to the new bippling generation.
You need to define units that are likely to buy right.
You can't just try to sell to all of them.
So we always invert this process that we established from
(25:42):
your logo ABM. We segment all units by the level
of the awareness. Do they know us, do they know
our solution? Right? The second? If they know us, do
we know they need or strategic initiative because the fact
so let's say you are selling to the Germany team
or to the Spanish team, but it doesn't mean that
(26:04):
let's say team in another region in Uki, for example,
they have the same vision and maybe they even don't
have a buy in of the challenge that your product
sells and they don't prioritize the solution right. So quite
often you need to take take care of these things
and just avoid you know which list opportunistic center when
(26:25):
selecting the accounts. So these are the important steps that
you need to incorporate. I think one of the most
important also issues is the engagement with the buying committee groups, right,
when you identify how you go and to engage with them.
(26:45):
As I said, you can't just send you know, like
send a bunch of emails saying, hey, we say we
are selling to a team in Spain, right, so go
and get other solution. Basically, let's let's let's book a dema.
So I think this is one of the most important
parts of what if you would like to jump in
and just we can have this last part when we
(27:06):
define the units right, well, now the playbook how we're
going to engage was them. And I think also if
align this with two playbooks, right, either that we want
to run internal workshop with our champion or if we
want to do this product training to ensure that the
team has getting valiant, that they're not charmed, that would
be cool.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yeah, there's a lot of the playbooks or ways in
which you can engage the buyers and that we have
spoken about over many different episodes in the context of
engaging net new accounts and generating pipeline, right, A lot
of the same techniques can be applied here. All Right,
(27:49):
there is one very important difference, and that is that
you have internal champions. You have internal users who might
be able to connect to your target buyers from the
other accounts. In addition, what you can do as well
to generate awareness within those accounts is you can do,
(28:12):
for example, the interview that have created with the champion
to create a key study, the kid study itself, et cetera.
You can promote this internally. When I say promote this internally,
this can take different forms. It could just be like
literally just promoting these we paid ads on the level
(28:33):
of the account. If the county is sufficially large, this
can take you know, you can have internal teams helping
you promote this. Like for example, we have worked with
a client where they had many different so their customers
were these big mining companies that had very different regional
(29:02):
minds I guess right where they did operations, and they
had kind of a central team that was in charge
of technological decisions. Like they would like exploring new technologies.
They would discover new technologies that can be used by
different minds, and then they would like suggest these technologies
to be used by the different minds, usually technical people
(29:23):
who would discover our client's product, but they wouldn't necessarily
equipped or they would have the time to really spread
spread this music internally. So there, for example, it was
all about helping that internal champion spread the word to
the rest of the organization. Andrey mentioned for example a
(29:46):
workshop or a webinar that you could organize together with
your champion, where you could explain how you have implemented
the product basically kind of a life case study, but
again in eternally for that account. And then again you
could be promoting that as well as part of the
(30:06):
awareness creation. You could be partnering maybe with the internal
communications team to help you promote it. Like I said,
a lot of the new techniques so for example, obviously
like connecting with those target buyers on social for example,
on LinkedIn and engaging with them and starting conversations with them,
(30:30):
like a lot of the different playbooks that we share. Now,
if you're organizing that webinar, internal webinar, internal workshop, or
whatever form of events that you're running, this gives another
set of opportunities to create touch points to engage those
target buyers, such as, for example, if they register for
(30:52):
that event, you can reach out to them to collect
questions you can obviously engage in during this event or
going to make it a little bit more interactive for
see some specific interactions to maybe get more information from
them in terms of their challenges, priorities, etc. And obviously
(31:16):
as a follow up, so you can in summary leverage
a lot of the let's say same or similar techniques
that we would use to reach out to net new
buyers such as social etc. You can obviously ask your
champion for introductions whenever that's possible. I mean I can
(31:40):
definitely tell you that in some cases this is possible.
You might collaborate with the internal communications team in promoting
the internal workshop because you're not promoting your own vendor workshop.
You're actually promoting this champions workshop, right, You're on their behalf,
promoting their project, like their success until you're not promoting yourself.
(32:03):
So of course as a consequence, yes, but not on
the front line, let's say. And of course, whenever you
have that workshop, this gives you an opportunity to have
additional touch points. This is how I would approach it.
Anything else they would end.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
There, and they actually I was thinking before this podcast
episode one of like, how initially did I come up
with the expansion playbook sharing my experience on Kimberly Clark.
But then I thought it could be a little bit
complicated for people because it's enough fmcgy and slightly different
(32:41):
use case compared to the technical let's say, to the
tech space. So what I was thinking, and I see
a good question from money can done so we can
cover this as well. But what I was thinking, how
can we wrap up this, let's say the expansion playbook.
I was thinking us to share the expansion from the
(33:03):
buying perspective and we can quickly, we can quickly chat
about it, so to give you a full context, guys,
So recently we switched from Notion to clickup right, and
that was a specific reason for this. We're looking for
a solution and initially we check checked base camp and
then decided to move to clickup to simplify client projects
(33:25):
also internal tasks, et cetera. We were using Notion for
this and Notion became clumsy and complicated and absolutely not
helpful and not useful. So from this specific reason, what
was doing research and what signed up for clickup? Obviously
we are too small for clickup to the proactive expansion
(33:46):
and follow all of these steps right, but I think
it could be nice if I have an interview and
we can explain how these steps could look like if
click Up were decided to do it right. So the
normal the first step would be Bloods signing up and
normally that should be the customer interior. So we can
just maybe simulate it and I will just quickly inter
(34:07):
it imagining. So full Final was selected as a company
was an expansion potential, right, and I'm working now for
fu Cla Cup, so let's simulate it. But I think
it could be good, very good to show how that
might look like in practice. And also I know that
we don't have this now, we have struggled a little
(34:28):
bit that they don't do this for us, so I'm
not using the full potential of the production. But anyhow
we selected. So we selected full Final and the first step,
as I mentioned, so we need to accelerate time to
value and understand the reason. So I was just like
if my first step would be invited a lot for
(34:48):
the interiow asking hey, a lot would you mind? I
just want to make sure that you get maximum VELA
out of your product? Would you mind to jump on
fifteen or twenty minutes called to talk about it?
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
So the first the first question that I would ask
you what led you to look for our product?
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Right? What what? What? What?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
What are strategic initiatives and what triggered you to start
looking for the solutions?
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah, so we grew our team and UH, our onboarding
new employee wanted to have our s o ps and
our playbooks documented in one place, UH and also integrated
project management. That's that is why we started looking for
for a tool. We did use Notion in the past,
(35:34):
switch from Notion to click up because we didn't feel
like a Notion was actually a good fit for what
we were and what we were looking for.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Awesome. So the second step that I would like to understand, right,
so now we see the strategic initiatives, Now I would
like to understand what are specific operations that you need
our product help with.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Okay, this is so just like on a metal level,
ANDREI didn't just say yes, okay, thank you, Okay, let
me just show you the product. And I think this
is a mistake there I see a lot of people
make when they're doing these kind of interviews. Instead of that,
he decided to go one level deeper, right to understand, really,
(36:22):
what were these in our case, what were these operations
that we wanted to use click up for anyhow, So
let me switch back to the role, and this is
to say that mainly it has to do with our
internal processes. So we are looking to onboard somebody who
(36:46):
is helping us with the operations mainly around content production,
around preparing and managing client projects, and our courses. Let's
say these are the three key operations that we're looking
to manage using click up.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
So just to summarize, you want to do the project manager,
and I assume that the project manager will be using
the product right to orchestrate the projects, control the tasks,
et cetera. Then you mentioned the content team and potentially
you would like to streamline content production, having content calendar
in place and making sure that you follow the pass right.
(37:29):
Then on the strategic level, from the CEO perspective, you
want to look at all the operations, harbers and functions
right are hitting the let's say milestones and targets? Correct?
Speaker 1 (37:42):
That is correct?
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Yeah? And now a very quick question, so do all
of the teams that and trolls that I just mentioned
do all of them know about our product and understand
how to use it?
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Now? Currently it is only the operations centering myself mainly
using the product and what other tools they use them,
other tools that the other teams are using for for example,
the content management is mainly Google Docs. I think they're
probably still using parts of the Notion. They're still using
(38:19):
Notion for parts of the process, excuse me. And in
terms of the metrics that I think like it's mainly
a combination of Google Docs and Notion.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
And have they ever shared that they are not convenient
with this?
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Absolutely? Absolutely, This was like one of the main reasons
why we actually switched to started to consider the switch
and started to switch to to click up.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
So for sure, and would it be a gave as
you if I will create a few, let's say, a
few ideas on how to simplify on board and of
these teams and make sure that they will switch from
Notion and Google Docs and teams they will know how
to use all of these features and share it with
you first.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
I think it would be very helpful for me at
this stage to first of all understand myself how we
can support these different news cases for our different teams,
so I can first evaluate, right you know, whether this
is a good fit for the needs of these teams,
(39:27):
and then you know, any health that you could provide
in me then presenting this to the team would be
very very much appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
And this is the simulation of this conversation that gives
you an understanding of how your champions are thinking about
the solutions. Right, So to be able them to promote
your product internally, they need to understand exactly what what said,
how these different what are the benefits for these different units. Okay,
so maybe they are not convenient for them, and we
(40:01):
want to have everything in one place, but at the
same time, we have project manager and until these things
are done, maybe we want really okay if they're doing
it on Google Docs or whatever, until everything is on
schedule right and always done. So this is exactly the
reason this is, I feel where most companies have fallen
(40:22):
when they're creating their expansion playbook. The first step you
need to understand dependent to whom you're talking to, right
the economical buyer, to the decision maker, or to the
specific business leaders. Right. They need to see the whole picture.
If they're managing multiple teams, right, they need to see
a whole picture how these teams would be benefiting. And
(40:44):
you need to dig deeper because with all these insights
like what if you look at the insight what bloodshare
me imagine that full funnel was like one K organization
ten K.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
I don't wish this. By the way, never ever had
enough of nine years working for these organizations juxtaside, So
imagine if we were at that size. Right. That means
that from this conversation, I understood that there is a
content team, right that is probably not convenient with their
(41:19):
current status quo, and they're using ineffective solutions, and I
need to sell to them. And this team, they didn't
buy the license for them or licenses let's put it
like this, right, that's the first The second one we
have project manager, and we mentioned a couple of sayings.
So we just bought the let's say task management solution,
but we didn't buy the documentation companies week, et cetera.
(41:42):
And this is where basically upselling happens. Right, So we
bought just a few let's say, a set of a
few features, but there is a need for more, and
I need to create a case for this. Why buying this,
why buying this now?
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Right?
Speaker 2 (41:56):
And what would be the benefits for the organization for
the specific economical buyer, what would be the benefits for
the power users? Write how it's better than the let's
say existent way of doing things running certain operations, and
then based on this, defining the right training pas So,
like we mentioned, it could be the like presented to
(42:19):
the champion and then hosting the internal training or reaching
out engageing those folks explaining how we can help with
their specific operations. Because this is purely one to one
play filfree to jump in.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Yeah, I just wanted to say that even for organization
of our size, like I mentioned one news case that
could even like lead click up into a real expansion.
Where I mentioned client projects, So we work with many
clients and each of these clients has an internal team
and if it would decide I'm not saying that we would,
(42:54):
it would make sense for us and just like in
a psychothetical example, a good sales and would try to
dig deeper in that and try to understand. Okay, what
are the kind of most important KPIs when it comes
to this consulting project. So many people are involved, how
are you communicating with those consulting projects consulting sorry, consulting
(43:16):
clients excuse me today? You know what are the bottlenecks
when it comes to that communication, project management, reporting, et cetera,
et cetera. What would be you know, the needs that
are related to that and eventually maybe end up selling
as a deal where we could onboard many different consulting
(43:40):
clients and end up paying instead of you know, a
couple of licenses into three four licensing, paying you know,
potentially an equivalent of you know, dozens or even maybe hundreds.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah, and the point is as well, if the company
would dive deeper into our process, they would see that
we don't use I feel, maybe sixty percent of their
features currently. I'm not saying that they are not available,
but just employment didn't see a valuant, We didn't prioritize
the usage of these features. So that's the first time, right,
(44:16):
So there's no need to pay. And if they would
send us transactional emails, hey, you know, we have this
fantastic feature, go and buy it, just would immediately be
deleted and ignored.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Right, Well, I mean they did send us a lot
of emails. You know, whenever you sign up to any
sas product, you get tons of emails promoting your shit,
but you just ignore it all because this is what
you're used to getting and you're just trying to focus
on your own specific case. By the way, clickup did
reach to us and we had this onboarding call, but
(44:50):
it wasn't the person who did it wasn't really trained
in up selling or really probing for the cases. But
it was very helpful for me to understand the product better.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Which leads us back to the fast steps that we
share it with you. Right, to be able to sell,
you need to build relationship with your champion, but also
you need to make your champion and a hero of
the organization, and you need to understand the buying reasons,
how your product is helping and if it's not helping yet,
how can you help them to get that value out
(45:27):
of product? Right? So then what are the different units
and the high you are climbing?
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Right?
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Maybe they don't have You're selling just to one business unit,
and this business unit might not be fully aware of
how the sayings look like in different units, et cetera.
But at least you can understand, like how the things
are done, then you can define either the business unit
expansion right or maybe upselling to this business unit diving
(45:53):
deeper into their needs, operations, et cetera, and growing the
value of that account. So quite often the teams, indeed,
like in this case, they have the client success process
and then they can show us the product. But showing
the product doesn't mean that it's helping us to fully
adopt it, right, that's the difference. So to be able
(46:15):
to have successful expansion and retention, you need to install
these steps into the client success process or literally what
happens after the deal is signed, right, building relationship with Champion,
diving deeper, understanding the needs, understanding the strategic initiators, prioritizing
based on these units or departments or regions regional teams
(46:39):
that you can sell too, and then step by step
creating these internal use cases and then defining the best
possible engaging engagement formats. Sometimes it would be like what said,
it won't be even possible to get a lot of
insights from Champion. They might be super busy, so you
might get just fifteen minutes. You can introe that process.
(47:00):
You can get these insights and then maybe you can
sell to other business units completely different departments. Right, But
you can pick up these insights and start selling to
the same units but in different departments, referring to your champion,
refer to this internal case study, and also doing a
little bit of a count research, understanding the current way
(47:21):
of doing things right and then presenting them sharing these
personalized solutions with them. So in the natural, this is
how you crafted and just we wanted to share with
you the full setup. So at the end, maybe let's
pick up this question from money can done? If you want?
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Flat absolutely no, thank you. So there is the question
was yes you projected. It's basically one thing to get
people to register to a webinar, to an event, but
that registration doesn't always convert to another to the webinar.
(48:01):
So how can we increase attendance to any webinar? I
think it actually starts from the topic how well the
I think like when it comes to any event or
a webinar education let's say event, there are two most
important things to consider. How did you what is the topic?
And how did you position that event? And who is
(48:24):
the speaker? I think like these are the two key points.
So the better the speaker, the more so. For example,
if you're organizing an event with the speaker who is
followed by a specific audience who is just waiting for
an opportunity to hear them speak. I say speaker, I
mean like it can be any expert. I don't mean
(48:45):
like specifically people who are trained public speakers, right, just
like any expert where there is already an existing audience
where there is a lot of authority from that person.
The more authority, the more that person is known by
the audience, the how the chance of people actually registered
and also attending the audience. It starts from there. So
(49:05):
selecting the So if you're just like putting random people
and nobody knows them, the chance of you getting a
successful event is very low. The next one is how
you position this if this is yet another event. Well,
first of all, if it is kind of like very
product centric, if it's like clear that you're basically what
you want to do is a product pitch, then there's
(49:28):
also a very low chance of getting people to attend
unless they're really interested in a product, or if they're
really interesting, product can also reach out to you and
have a person one on one demo. So what would
be the reason for them to come? So having some
trust that people will actually get some good education, and
how you position it. So, let's say, if you want
to now organize an event even like with a good audience,
(49:51):
a good following, good trust from our audience. If he said, oh,
will do yet another webinar about let's say LinkedIn, le
generation or some thing like that, and there is like
a lot of content about this topic. While people might
not want to join. But if we want to organize
an event about how to run account based marketing and LinkedIn,
(50:11):
this is a more unique positioning of a similar topic
that might attract more audience to the topic. Next, how
you're promoting it and how you're actually connect What you
can do as well is you can connect to people
who register to the event and start engagement before the event.
This will help you also increase the attendance. What I
(50:35):
mean by that is that you can like licually. This
is going to be helpful both well in terms of
generating those relationships the potentially later pipeline connecting to them.
For example, let's say you invited Let's say I invited
andres an expert to speak about companies marketing, and I
have attendees and let's say Christina, for example, here is
(50:57):
an attendee, and I'm reaching out to Christina, Hey, thanks
a lot for registering for that event about ABM with Andre.
He asked me to collect questions that we make sure
that we are addressing the topics that are most relevant
for people who register. You know, what is the one
thing you're hoping to get out from this Bina for example,
(51:19):
this could be a way for me to kind of
reach out to people. You can also obviously you know,
basic stuff like reminders. And then I think, also there
is like one last thing that I wanted to mention,
and that is like, your first event is probably not
going to be the one with the greatest number of
registration and greatest number of attendees. I think you need
(51:43):
to show you need to deliver on your promise. So
if you are known for running events, if you become
known for running events that are actually valuable educational. We
just share practical insights practically, but you delivered a lot
of value, your chance of having the next event a
(52:03):
better is going to increase. So don't look at it
as one thing. Don't say, Okay, we tried it. We
didn't get a lot of results the first time. When
we started with our for example life podcast, we had
seven guests. We then grew to having several hundreds and
sometimes when around these webinars, we have more than one
thousand people register and more than five hundred people join
(52:27):
on of those events. But that's not where we started.
It takes some time. It takes basically to deliver on
your promise enough times that it becomes known as somebody
who is able to do that, where people are going
to get very so that they come over again to
the event. So that was a long answer to your
simple question.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yeah, but I think we have covered ever since, so
it was I feel it was really good conversation. Also,
we tried our best not just to keep it theoretical,
but also show you practice how that might look like
using our recent keys.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
Also you can see it from the buyer perspective and
from the seller perspective how you can orchestrate this playbox right,
and just put all of these insights into action. Let
us know if that was helpful in the chat, feel
free to type your favorite emogy or just.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
A quick feedback.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
And meanwhile, just to let you know, in the upcoming weeks,
we'll invite another client, and this time I'm super excited.
I'm always excited to talk about our clients. But what
is cool because we'll invite a salesperson so you'll see
(53:46):
how ABM looks like from the sales perspective. What is
the role of sales in account based marketing? We schedule it.
We scheduled it for eleventh of December, right.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
There's screen two weeks time, so yeah, it's eleven or twelve, right,
so it's eleven, you're.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Right, So stay tuned. That would be a lot of
cool stuff coming in and vision you create rest of
the week. Take care, everybody, cheers.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Bye,